Rethinking Talent Recruitment

It’s no secret that our economy is going through an unprecedented technological churn. It’s said that 38%of American jobs are at high risk of vanishing due to automation, and while it’s not hard to see what sectors of the U.S. economy could be hard hit by automation (transportation, factory work, retail), it’s inherently much more difficult to predict exactly where the next generation of jobs will pop up and what they’re going to look like.

While it might feel like we have to take a “wait and see” approach to discover what jobs technology will create (no one in 2008 was predicting “Uber driver” or “social media manager” would be as ubiquitous as they are today), it takes no time at all before there’s an urgent need, and stiff competition, to fill these new roles. Just try finding a “senior blockchain developer” in today’s market. Tech startups know they have a short window to gain an advantage in a new space, and tech giants are equally aware they have to continually appeal to the most sought-after tech employees.

What’s missing?

While it’s clear there’s a shortage of qualified candidates for open tech roles, $21 billion worth according to some estimates, the path for people to become qualified candidates is less clear. Due to the inherently disruptive and fast-evolving nature of these jobs, traditional colleges and universities aren’t necessarily able to adapt and keep up with the pace of change. The pressure to find talent is forcing new models to emerge and ultimately solve the age-old issue of finding and hiring the best candidates. This presents a unique opportunity for alternate methods of education and recruitment for forward-thinking companies.

When Internships Turn Into Wynternships

One of the more interesting emerging models is a kind of hybrid that coding bootcamp, Wyncode Academy, presents. They have tackled the challenge of preparing candidates for unfilled jobs in the most direct way possible: by working directly with companies to prepare candidates to fill current job openings that fit the specific needs of the company. Wyncode’s Custom Cohorts program is an interesting example of how both employers and educators can work together to create a system that is extremely adaptable (each cohort is tailored to individual employer specifications) and allows potential employees the opportunity to train for a specific set of skills they know will make them job ready. While it’s not a new practice for companies to train their employees, it is quite new for them to take matters into their own hands by partnering with a coding academy to create a unique curriculum specific to their needs, thereby flipping the hiring model and training the employees they need before they ultimately hire them.